522 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

490 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

cinders, clubs, or stieks of any kind; this was a provocation,
for which the law reduces the offense of Killing down to man-
slaughter, in consideration of those passions im our nature,
which cannot be eradicated. To your eandor and justice I
submit the prisoners and their cause.

The law, in all victmitudes of government, fluctuations of
the passions, or flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady
undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes,
imaginations, and wanton tempers of men. To use the words
of a great and worthy man, & patriot, and an hero, an enlight-
ened friend of mankind, and « martyr to liberty; I mean
Algernon Sidney, who from his earliest infancy sought a tran-
quil retirement under the chadow of the tree of liberty, with
his tongue, his pen, and his sword: ‘‘The law,’ says he, ‘‘no
passion can disturb. "Tis void of desire and fear, lust and
anger, "Tis mens sine affectu; written reason; retaining
some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that
which pleases a weak, frail man, but without any regard to
persons, commands that which ia good, and punishes evil in
all, whether rich or poor, high or low—’Tis deaf, inexorable,
inflexible.’’ On the one hand it is inexorable to the eries and
lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as
an adder to the elamors of the populace.

MR, PAINE FOR THE PROSECUTION.

Hr. Paine, It now remains to close this case on the part
of the crown—a cause which from the importance of it has
been examined with such minuteness and protracted to such
a length that I fear it has fatigued your attention, as I am
certain it has exhausted my spirita. It may, however, serve
to show you, gentlemen, and all the world, that the benignity
of the English law, so much relied on by the counsel for the
prisoners, is well known and attended to among us, and suf-
ficiently applied in the case at the bar. Far be it from me to
advance, or even to insinuate any thing to the disparagement
of that well known principle of English law, in support of